In this week’s web design and development news roundup, you’ll discover examples of data visualizations, find out how to be build stable and sustainable WordPress websites, learn about CSS specificity, and more.
If you’re new to my blog, each Friday I publish a post highlighting my favorite user experience, accessibility, WordPress, CSS, and HTML posts I’ve read in the past week.
Hope you find the resources helpful in your work or projects!
Want more resources like these on a daily basis? Follow me @redcrew on Twitter.
Tweet of the Week
In movies, the main character (that’s you) stands up & gives an impassioned speech. It changes everything.
— Wes Kao 🏛 (@wes_kao) June 12, 2022
But that’s not real life.
In reality, it’s all the little moments–conversations in emails, meetings, Slack messages–that build your reputation.
Make the most of them.
User Experience
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Kara Pernice explains how to democratize user research in five steps, so anyone, no matter their role in your organization, can conduct user research. That’s something we did when I worked at the college, multiple members of the web services team were involved in user research.
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Looking for user experience books to read this summer? User Interviews asked their User Research Yearbook Class of 2022 for their UX research book recommendations. Check out their 55 recommended books about UX research and design, diversity, business and management, science, psychology, and sociology, and more.
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Join UXPA Boston for their July 12, 2022 free online meetup with Diana DeMarco Brown presenting Agile Principles for Designers. With agile principles a required skill in design these days, DeMarco Brown will discuss basic Agile basics and help you hone your path forward with the methodology.
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In the latest edition of Smashing Magazine’s Web Design Done Well series, Frederick O’Brien highlights examples of data visualization on the web. The United Nations Refugee Project stream chart of refugee movement in the 20th and 21st century is fascinating.
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Enjoyed Dan Mall’s latest post on the folly of design system foundations, where he discusses misunderstandings about design systems. And how some people misinterpret colors and typography as a foundation to a design system.
Accessibility
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Color contrast goes beyond color contrast of text on backgrounds. You’ll also want to check color contrast for non-text items, as Tamara Sawyer explains in keep Minnesota bright. Low color contrast on form fields and buttons can keep people with low vision or working in bright sunlight from being able to view your content.
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A reminder: disabilities affect everyone at some point in their life.
Disabilities are temporary and permanent, visible and non-visible, from birth or acquired later. Anyone can join the disability community at any time. #DisabilityFacts pic.twitter.com/emJehCifIg
— RespectAbility (@Respect_Ability) June 14, 2022 -
Cristian Díaz takes a closer look at Windows high contrast mode, explaining what it is, who uses it, and what practices to follow to create sites friendly to those who use it. Díaz reminds us:
Our biggest priority with this mode is easing readability and not harming the user experience in any way.
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The AccessComputing team at the University of Washington are organizing a new book tentatively named Teaching Accessible Computing. The goal is to publish it online (and it will be free!). Are you, or do you know someone, interested in contributing? Fill out their Google form to share your interest in writing or evaluating Teaching Accessible Computing.
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The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is calling all course instructors to share their courses, training, and certification on digital accessibility. They plan to review and publish your submission within 2-4 weeks.
WordPress
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Learn Matt Mullenweg’s thoughts on the future of technology and where WordPress fits in from this week’s WP Tavern Jukebox podcast (40-minute episode).
I’m really proud of what we’ve done, but there’s so much more to do.
And especially if we’re trying to make the editor for the entire web, it’s even bigger than WordPress.
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As my friend Eric Karkovack explains, having infinite customizations in WordPress can be both a blessing and a curse. Which is why he recommends his keys to building stable and sustainable WordPress websites.
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Matias Ventura shares some early concepts of thinking through the WordPress admin interface, with the hopes of starting conversations about the third phase of the current WordPress roadmap. Good discussion in the comments.
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It’s live! The new Gutenberg landing page has launched. Built entirely with Gutenberg. Shoutout to all the contributors.
CSS and HTML
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Another incredible work of CSS art: The Queen’s Gambit, created by Asyraf Hussin.
See the Pen Pure CSS The Queen’s Gambit by Asyraf Hussin (@AsyrafHussin) on CodePen.
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Creating bordered shadow on a card-style component was a learning experience for Chen Hui Jing. After choosing to use two box shadows to create the colored shadow and border for the colored shadow, she discovered some issues. Which eventually led her to use something she hadn’t considered: a negative value for box-shadow.
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Are you using flex or grid in your CSS?
CSS Tip 💡
— Andrej ⚡️ (@reactive_dude) June 15, 2022
If you’re using margins to add spacing between your flex or grid items.
There’s a better way 🥂 pic.twitter.com/TxlTmGQABd -
Confused about CSS specificity? Estelle Weyl rewrote the specificity page on MDN Web docs, updated with info on
:is()and:where()and cascade layer impact. (Personal note: I met Estelle in person over 15 years ago at the TODCon conference in Orlando. Great person, and one of the top CSS people.)
What I Found Interesting
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It was a long run, but it’s time to say farewell to Internet Explorer 11 on Windows 10. I appreciate my friend Eric Karkovack allowing me to publish his poem about Internet Explorer’s retirement in my post.
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Did you know your iPhone stores photos in four different image formats? But not every photo is stored in all four formats. Femy Praseeth shares what she learned about iPhone photos and the different image formats when she decided to clean up photos on her iPhone.
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Well, this is interesting! Adobe plans to make Photoshop on the web free to everyone. Currently, they’re testing a free version for folks in Canada. To my Canadian readers, have you tried it out?
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